White Christmas Lights
by xxAshlinxx
Summary: The Christmas she's been dreading is finally here and she just wants everything this to be over with. Then something pauses her mindframe and set her back to a time where she loved Christmas and Christmas light. When she had a family.


_Those Christmas lights,  
Light up the street,  
Down where the sea and city meet  
_

White Christmas lights twinkled and blinked in front of her eyes. They seemed to be the only lights shinning on this lonely street. The way they glowed was as if they had a secret message and purpose, like the glorious night star that glistened over the stable when baby Jesus was born. Clare smiled lightly and tears trickled down her rosy cheeks.

_A group of cameras on there flicker, Oh they flicker and they flow  
And I'm up here holding on to all those chandeliers of hope  
_

His birthday was approaching and, though she usually adored Christmastime, this year was going to be like attempting to survive in one's worst nightmare. For Clare, that was her parents. Although she was venomously dreaded the separation between the two, she had a hope that this split would cease the bickering.

_May all your troubles soon be gone_

When they fought as if she wasn't listening just one floor above, she genuinely felt heart sink lower and lower, exploring her entire inner body with every insult and accusation. It caressed her ribcage many nights, all but bursting against the individual ribs, slipping in between each of them like butter and gliding along the walls on the inside of her skin, surprising every one of her nerves, compelling them to jump and then sizzle.

_Like some drunkard Elvis singing, I go singing out of tune  
_

Sometimes her heart reduced to serving her stomach as a trampoline until she herself was bouncing with frustration and pulling out her hairs in balled fits.

_Christmas night, another fight  
Tears we cried; a flood  
Got all kinds of poison in, poison in my blood  
_

She honestly don't know why she cried anymore. The slightest bit of emotion that graze her heart—whether it was sadness or anger or relief or fear—seemed to cause her pitiful self-strength to snap and send fat tears falling out of her eyeballs without her will. She could not control it; it was paired with everything that has ever been in her life. It was all unmanageable. Everything was gradually spilling through the gaps between her delicate fingers until her hand was left empty, useless.

_Oh when I'm still waiting for the snow to fall,  
It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_

Yet, at the moment, Clare was overwhelmingly happy. She sat down cross-legged on the sidewalk and wiped her wet eyes with the end of her coat sleeve.

_Then all my troubles will be gone,  
Oh Christmas lights, keep shining on_

It was freezing outside but she hardly noticed it. She always felt that the weather could be colder, the wind could blow harsher, the sun could beat down harder. It wasn't seeing the glass half full; it was bracing herself for what's to come.

_When you're still waiting for the snow to fall,  
It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all  
_

Randall remembered Christmas.

She knew he couldn't forget it; it was all you could see in mid-December. Every song played on the radio, every light brightening the snow-covered lawns, every card received in the mailbox.

But he remembered to make time for it. Beautiful white lights filled the empty spaces in the bushes and covered the front steps, outlining the whole house like a Light Bright.

_Oh when I'm still waiting for the snow to fall,  
It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all  
_

Clare was mystified. She had always loved white lights like these that shone with the clear glimmer of God's love, which was breathtaking, clean, and consistent.

But Helen wanted dim colors. Every year up until now, the Edwards family had had a dull, unilluminated nativity scene that couldn't even be seen in the night. Mary sat in pink, Joseph knelt in blue, naked Jesus laying in a yellow manger.

Helen didn't take out the decorations this Christmas, not even after that huge fight she had with Randall about who got to keep them. She argued that Christmas lights outside a warm looking house showed one, happy family, not one that was spending Christmas on two different sides of town. She had screamed at him, saying that she deserved the last shred of something appearing family-like because she had tried to make their family work while he watched it fall apart without being the man of the family.

Clare knew that wasn't true. _She_ had watched her family before her eyes, astonished, and her attempt to unite her family had failed.

_Trying to right a wrong  
"Just walk away", those windows say, but I can't believe she's gone  
_

Following her triumph, Helen snorted and tugged the many boxes entitled 'Christmas' to the attic, where they currently rest, dying from lack of sun.

Sighing and wiping her eyes for a final time, Clare rose from the cold sidewalk and opened the front door with the spare key her possessed. Smiling, smiling for the first time in a long time, she entered the house and called her dad downstairs, embracing him the moment he appeared at the foot of the staircase.

_Oh Christmas lights, light up the street.  
Light up the fireworks in me  
May all your troubles soon be gone  
Those Christmas lights, keep shining on  
_

**I know I'm late on the whole "Christmas theme". I wrote it a while ago so sorry. I might write more but I might not. I was gonna make it a story but now chirstmas is over and I'm out the mood. Plus I don't know what to do. Soo any suggestions, leave a comment? Sweeet! **

**Ashlin**


End file.
